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Mushrooms, Provincial

Sautéed mushrooms with oil, garlic, lemon, parsley, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mushrooms, Provincial

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Slice the mushrooms.

  2. Place the sliced mushrooms in an earthen bowl.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of sweet oil, ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, a few grains of pepper, and 2 mashed cloves of garlic to the bowl.

  4. Cover the mixture with buttered paper.

  5. Let the mixture macerate in a cool place for 1 hour.

Cook and serve

  1. In an omelet pan, heat 1 tablespoon of sweet oil.

  2. Finely chop the mashed garlic and add it to the warmed oil.

  3. Add the mushrooms to the pan.

  4. Toss the mushrooms over the heat until warmed through.

  5. Stir in fine chopped parsley and the juice of ½ lemon.

  6. Serve the mushrooms on toast.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, juicy texture when warmed.
Garlic
Adds a pungent, aromatic flavour that mellows as it is warmed in the oil.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, oily flavour of the mushrooms.
Sweet oil
Carries the garlic flavour, moistens the mushrooms and helps them brown and cook evenly.

The step that matters

Macerate the mushrooms before cooking. Letting the sliced mushrooms rest in oil, salt and garlic for an hour lets the salt draw out moisture and season the flesh, so the mushrooms cook in the pan rather than steam in their own liquid.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, garlic, parsley, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Basilfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, garlic, parsley, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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